


set in stone

by avosettas



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Dreamtale (Undertale), Dissociation, Dreamtale Nightmare Sans (Undertale), Dreamtale Sans | Dream & Dreamtale Nightmare Sans (Undertale), Dreamtale Sans | Dream (Undertale), Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 03:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30049470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avosettas/pseuds/avosettas
Summary: Five birthdays where Dream and Nightmare were apart, and one where they're together again.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 104





	set in stone

**0.**

_(Five years before the Apple Incident)_

"Why has Mother lost her leaves?" 

Nightmare flinches, startled, though he's not sure Dream catches it. His brother is too busy staring at the bare branches of the Tree, enamored with how he can see the glow of the golden apples without their sheen being dampened by leaves. 

He exhales slowly, trying to keep his voice from shaking as he explains, "It's too cold right now. They'll come back in the spring." 

Dream sits beside him, a heavy thump onto the dirt. "Mother never has leaves on our birthday," he laments, dropping his head on Nightmare's shoulder. 

It takes effort to stop himself from startling again, but Nightmare manages it, incrementally relaxing with the warm weight of Dream against his side. "Our birthday is the first day of winter," he explains, methodically dog-earring his page in the book resting on his lap. He's read it before, quite a few times; it's one of the few he owns, though he wish it'd been obtained in better circumstances. 

(The librarian had, quite literally, thrown it back at his skull when he'd tried to return it. Called it _tainted_ because he'd touched it. She didn't have any issues when he sent Dream in to get him books, though. She'd help him find any books he asked for, even if her face went sour when she noticed Nightmare outside.) 

"What does that have to do with anything?" Dream asks petulantly. 

"By the time winter rolls around, it's been cold for many days," Nightmare tells him patiently, absentmindedly staring through the branches above him. The black apples look dull against the gray sky, though their skin shines faintly with the glow of their golden counterparts. "Mother has no need for her leaves when it's this cold, and so she sheds them until the spring." 

"I wish our birthday was in the spring," Dream sighs. After a moment, he sits up, and his gaze is frighteningly fierce. "I tried to get you a pastry, but the baker was acting strange. When he heard it was for your birthday, he said he had nothing left…" 

Nightmare can't stand his stare anymore, and so he looks away. At least the baker was delicate with Dream ~~because stars knew he wasn't with _Nightmare_ , calling him a devil and a tempter and far worse, too~~. "That's a shame," he says quietly, picking at the grass beneath his boots. 

Dream sighs again, but he seems to recognize that Nightmare isn't willing to talk about it further, because he leans back against the Tree once more. "Even so, I'm sorry I couldn't bring you anything. But still, happy birthday, Nightmare." 

"Happy birthday, Dream." 

**1.**

_(Several months after the Apple Incident.)_

The sun is what gets his attention. Nothing keeps his attention long these days, but today, the sunlight is enough. 

It's midmorning, by his own - admittedly faulty - internal clock. But the sun is high in the sky. 

(...Has he lost time _again_?) 

The barely-recognized thought fills him with rage, and before he realizes it, a tentacle has shot out and destroyed the remnants of an old cobblestone wall. It's not like he's upset about the loss, though. This world has never done him any favors. 

~~He never realizes that today is his birthday.~~

**2.**

_(One year after the Apple Incident.)_

The sun stopped rising a month or so ago, but on his good days, Nightmare still wakes up around the time sunrise should have been. 

Today, however, is not a good day. Even if he is, for once, conscious of his actions and not completely swamped by the negativity corrupting him, there is no way that today could ever be considered a good day. 

He wakes early - when he lights the candle at his bedside, the clock on the wall tells him that it's only half past four. But he knows he won't fall asleep again; as far as he can tell, using a combination of old calendars, lunar phases, and the constellations, today is his birthday. 

It's also Dream's birthday, and the first of their birthdays that they'll be spending apart.

Physically, Nightmare supposes, they are together. But mentally, he hopes that Dream is anywhere but this dying world, in a prison of Nightmare's making. 

The candle splutters out with the movement of his tentacles, so he dresses in the dark. It's an automatic process - he only owns a few articles of clothing, after all. He yanks on his boots, and throws his coats over himself as best he can, hindered by his extra appendages, and then he shoves the door open, trudging out into the snow. 

Dream is unchanged, of course. How could he change, when he's been frozen in stone?

His expression is one of fear and confusion, and even his static body language speaks to his terror. One hand is held against his chest, where the final apple had merged with his magic to create a soul, and the other is outstretched, as if to push back against an attacker. Even his cape is frozen in movement, billowing behind him, despite being in stasis just as the rest of his body is. 

The stump of their mother stands behind him, half ice-cold stone, half lichen-covered wood. The cut that had felled her was uneven; the villagers had begun it, chopping at her with their axes, hewing away at her roughly until the apples had dropped. 

Nightmare had finished the job. The crash had been loud as she fell, but aside from his stone brother, no one had been around to hear it, and so all he'd done was laugh. 

Now, without the grip of the negativity corrupting his actions and thoughts, he could feel nothing but shame. 

The feeling festers, and oily slime drips into the snow he stands in. He wonders if Dream can feel him, since he's standing right in front of him, drowning in guilt. 

(In his more lucid moments, he hopes not. To be awake, yet held in stasis - Nightmare isn't sure he would even wish that on the villagers who had caused this.)

( ~~He would. He wishes he had made their deaths slow.~~ )

He takes a deep breath, to calm the roiling emotions that threaten to swallow him whole, and then he sits in front of his brother, with his back turned. It hurts to hunch over, with the extra weight of his tentacles, but if he pretends, it's just like when he and Dream would sit on opposite sides of the tree, giving each other the silent treatment after a silly argument.

He opens his mouth, and then he closes it, the clack of his jaw muffled by the slime covering his body. It's hard to know what to say to someone who you imprisoned, especially if that someone is your brother. 

He sits there all day, and though the sun never comes out, the clouds clear eventually, and the stars come out later, shining weakly onto the empty world. The moon never shows; it must be a new moon tonight. 

Nightmare stands with a heavy sigh, his back clicking unpleasantly. He doesn't turn around as he says, "Happy birthday, brother." 

If he cries as he walks home, at least no one is alive to see it. 

**3.**

_(One hundred years after the Apple Incident.)_

The stars stop shining, eventually. 

Nightmare finds himself missing them, although the moon still rises and sets, perpetually tinted a yellow-ish orange. He likes anything the sky has to offer - Dream was never rebuked if he surprised Nightmare with a book on celestial bodies - but the stars had always been his brother's favorite parts of the night. 

(He would watch with wonder as the first appeared in the dusk light, and sometimes, if he was awake, he would frown sadly as the final star disappeared with sunrise. Often, he would ask Nightmare to point out constellations, or recite the mythology that the humans had come up with to explain the shapes created in the patterns of stars, and he would always listen attentively as Nightmare explained, even if he knew the stories by heart.) 

It's Dream's birthday present this year. A recitation of his favorite story. 

Nightmare stands in front of his brother, and though he has grown, Dream hasn't. The quarter moon illuminates his features, their constant fear, and Nightmare tries not to focus on that. 

"Do you remember when you brought me that book of fairytales from the library? The thick, black one, with the gold designs and silver lettering on the spine. You always said my favorite was so morbid…" 

His favorite had been called "The Girl Without Hands", and Dream had hated it. Nightmare couldn't even say _why_ it was his favorite. 

"Yours was nicer. I don't remember why you liked it so much," _And I'm sorry for that,_ his brain supplied silently. "But I found another copy of that book…" _In the ruins of everything._

Dream's favorite tale was strange, but no stranger than his own. He sits on the ground with a huff before beginning, staring at his hands in his lap, rather than his brother. 

"Once upon a time," ~~His voice is so different, now.~~ "There was a shepherd boy who was known across the land for being able to answer any question wisely. And his fame spread far and wide, to the point that even the king heard of his wisdom. The king called him to his palace, and said to the shepherd boy, 'If you can answer all three questions I have, I will take you in as my son, and you will live with me within my palace.'" 

(Maybe that was why Dream liked this tale so much. They didn't have a home; they had no family aside from each other.)

"The shepherd boy agreed, and so the king began. First, he asked how many drops of water were in all the oceans. The shepherd boy told him, 'Lord King, if all the rivers are dammed up so as to keep a single drop from running into the sea until I have counted them all, I will tell you.' Next, the king asked how many stars there were in the sky."

This part, Nightmare liked. Sometimes he would try to count them all, like the king in the tale asked, to clear his mind. 

"The shepherd boy asked for a piece of paper and a pen, and then he made so many points in the paper with the pen that there was hardly any paper left to be seen. 'Count the holes in the paper,' he said. 'That is how many stars are in the sky.' No one could count them, for anyone who tried would have gone blind. Finally, the king asked how many seconds were in eternity."

Neither of them had understood this final part, though only Nightmare had ever had any interest in discussing it. Dream was happy to take the story at its face value; Nightmare always wanted something _more_. 

"The shepherd boy said, 'There is a mountain of pure diamond, and it is two miles wide, two miles high, and two miles in depth. Every thousand years, a little bird flies over it, and sharpens its beak on this diamond mountain. When the whole mountain is worn away by this little bird, the first second of eternity will have passed.' The king deemed that the shepherd boy had answered his questions as a wise man would, and from that day forward the shepherd boy lived with the king in his palace and was treated as his child." 

He tips his head back to look at Dream. Nothing has changed, of course. "I'm sorry I couldn't get you anything better, but happy birthday, brother." 

_I miss you_ , he thinks, but their telepathic connection has been closed for years. 

**4.**

_(Four hundred eighty-nine years after the Apple Incident.)_

He doesn't make a habit of talking to Dream, except on their birthday. Even now, the negativity threatens to swallow him, to catapult him back into the fugue he lived in for the first century following his brother's imprisonment. 

"Someone came to our universe," he sighs, sitting in front of his brother on the dry grass, as he always does. Dream is shorter than he is by quite a bit, now; he probably can't grow while his body is held in stasis by stone. 

"Their emotions were strange, and their voice was loud," he confesses. "But I didn't want them to know I was here, especially when I realized that the issue with their emotions was that they were fake."

The stranger had been a skeleton, not unlike Nightmare and Dream, but they had felt _wrong_ in a way Nightmare couldn't place. They had arrived without a sound, and as Nightmare watched, they disappeared into a puddle of ink, deep black smeared over the grass behind Dream and their mother. 

The grass showed no sign of trauma from it, though. The patch that the stranger's puddle had covered was just as dead as the rest of the hills. 

"...I hope that they don't come back, but they seemed very interested in you," Nightmare admits. He rarely addresses Dream in his conversations - he'd stopped doing so centuries ago, because it hurt too much to speak and then wait for an answer that would never come. Today must be different. 

"I'm trying," he whispers, staring at the ground. "But this universe is so primitive. And there has never been anything like us before. Even Mother was different." 

Dream is silent, as he always is. Nightmare sighs. "Happy birthday, brother," he says, as he always does. "I miss you more than you know." 

**5.**

_(Four hundred and ninety-one years after the Apple Incident. One year after Dream's release from stone.)_

Dream never wakes up peacefully anymore. 

Every morning is a blaze of pain, or worse, a fog of dissociation, sometimes preempted by the horrible feeling of being trapped in his own body as someone that he can't see inches closer and closer to him. 

(Blue has learned that it's best not to interrupt Dream's screaming fits, though it took a few hits for that to really get through his skull.)

(Dream had bought a lock for his door after that, as a precaution. So that he wouldn't hurt anyone else while in the clutches of a night terror.) 

Today is no different. Today, Dream wakes to pain screaming up his bones, a fire raging inside his marrow. He can't help the groan that leaves him in response. 

And it isn't even light out yet. 

The digital clock Blue had placed beside the bed reads **4:50 AM** in bright green, and beside that, smaller, is the date. **12/21**. 

It's his birthday, and just thinking about it makes Dream want to go back to sleep. He can't imagine celebrating it by himself. He can't imagine a birthday without Nightmare. 

(He can't imagine a birthday _with_ Nightmare either, not after what happened.)

The one good thing about being in a world full of strangers, at least, is that none of them know that it's his birthday. 

If Dream is a little harder to drag from his dissociative headspace today, it's fine. No one notices besides Blue anyway. 

**+1**

_(Five hundred years after the apple incident. Ten years after Dream's release from stone.)_

The hot cocoa is good, but too hot to drink for now. Dream had almost spit it out upon trying, and so now it simply warms his hands, steam rising leisurely from the mug to cloud the starry sky in front of him. 

"It's hot," Nightmare scolds him needlessly, but the nostalgia it brings up is bittersweet. He hasn't attempted to drink his own cocoa yet, too busy watching Dream sputter on his own scalding mouthful. 

"I know!" Dream replies petulantly. "It's good, though."

Nightmare hums in response, fingers tightening on his own mug as he stares towards the horizon from their rooftop perch. Quietly, he admits, "I missed you. A lot." 

"...Did you?" Dream asks, just as soft. He can no longer meet his brother's eye, inside staring into his mug. "I know you said - you said that it was an accident. When you turned me into stone, I mean -" 

(And what a weight off his shoulders that had been. To know that his brother hadn't hated him enough to imprison him for an eternity. To know that their whole "war" had been a series of misunderstandings, one after the next.) 

" - but I - I don't know if you were -" 

"Don't suggest I was happy about it," Nightmare bites out, a hairline crack appearing in the ceramic in his hands. "I was so…" He pauses, mouth not quite closing, as if he choosing his next words carefully. "I lost myself for so long, after I first ate the apples," he says slowly. "And when I realized who I was again, all that was left of me was _shame_." 

"I'm sorry." 

"It's not your fault." 

Dream places his mug on the roof next to him, and twists to face his brother. "I mean for bringing it up." 

"I think we're going to constantly be bringing up old hurts, brother," Nightmare replies bitterly. "It's a bit of a curse, I suppose." 

Dream shrugs. "At least if we're bringing them up, it means we're on speaking terms." He means it as a joke, but Nightmare just frowns. "Don't be such a cynic," he sighs when his brother doesn't answer but for that frown, leaning against him in a facsimile of how they used to sit beneath the Tree. 

"I'm the guardian of negativity," Nightmare replies.

"Yes, that doesn't need to entail cynicism, though, does it?" 

"Keep trying," Nightmare snorts, because this, too, is a remnant of the past. Days spent staring through the boughs of the Tree, debating negativity versus cynicism, and positivity versus optimism. Pointing out the gray areas of emotions.

"I will," Dream says, "but not right now, because I'm sleepy." And he looks it; his eye sockets are barely open, and his full weight is on Nightmare's shoulder, now. 

"Then sleep." 

"No," he whines. "It's the first birthday we're spending together since we were little, I don't want to sleep yet…" 

"I'm not sure you have much of a choice," Nightmare muses, chuckling as his brother struggles to keep his sockets open enough to even have a conversation. "Sleep, brother. There will be many more birthdays." 

"Promise?"

"Yes, I promise. Happy birthday, Dream. Now rest, please." 

"...Happy birthday, Night," Dream replies slowly. The next time Nightmare glances at him, he's fast asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter @avosettas


End file.
